In our study of the southern campaign I talked about Joshua’s leadership characteristics. This story of the northern campaign reminds us of the importance of spiritual leadership. The same principles that he put into practice in his military campaigns are principles that you and I need to put into our spiritual campaigns. We saw in the first place that Joshua never seemed to allow short-term gains to turn him back from long-range objectives. He knew what he was there to do. He was there to conquer the land and to do away with the kings and the armies of the cities. And even though he saw short-term things that might have been quite attractive at the time, he never turned aside to what was a lesser objective.

We already looked in some detail at the southern campaign. The northern one is given in even less detail than the southern one, although it is similar in many respects. Like the southern campaign, the one in the north is also waged against a coalition of kings who gathered together to try and repulse the Israelite conquest of Canaan. We’re told at the very beginning of chapter 11 that there was a king in the north, the king of Hazor, whose name was Jabin. He saw what was happening and decided to respond by getting together all of the forces at his disposal. So he sent out a call to all of these cities, saying that they had to get together and fight against Israel, or else they were going to suffer the same fate as the cities in the south. They amassed a great army, and they gathered together at the waters of Merom, which is a small lake just north of the Sea of Galilee. And there this great host of the kings of the north gathered together to fight against Joshua.